WHAT IS GREEN ECONOMICS?

Green
economics is the economics of the real world—the world of work, human
needs, the Earth’s materials, and how they mesh together most
harmoniously. It is primarily about “use-value”, not
“exchange-value” or money. It is about quality, not quantity for the sake of it. It is
about regeneration---of individuals,
communities and ecosystems---not about accumulation,
of either money or material.

The industrial or capitalist
definition of wealth has always been about the accumulation of money and
matter. Any use-values generated (i.e. social needs met) have been
secondary—a side-effect, by-product, spin-off or trickle-down—to
the primary goal of monetary accumulation. For two centuries, the quest to accumulate
money or capital drove a powerful industrialization process that actually did
spin off many human benefits, however unfairly distributed. But blind material
and monetary growth has reached a threshold where it is generating more
destruction than real wealth. A postindustrial world requires an economics
of quality, where both money and matter are returned to a status of means
to an end. Green economics means a direct
focus on meeting human and environmental need.

Tinkering with money, interest
rates, or even state regulation is insufficient in creating sensible
economies. One can scarcely imagine a more inefficient, irrational and
wasteful way to organize any sector of the economy than what we actually have
right now. Both the form and the content of sustainable
agriculture, of green manufacturing, of soft energy, etc. are diametrically
opposed to their current industrial counterparts, which are intrinsically
wasteful. There is no justifiable rationale to be producing vast quantities
of toxic materials; or generating more deskilled than skilled labour; or
displacing labour rather than resources from production; or extending giant
wasteful loops of production & consumption through globalization. These
are economic inefficiencies, economic irrationalities that can only be righted
by starting from scratch—to look at the most elegant and efficient ways
of doing everything. As green economist Paul Hawken writes, our social and
environmental crises are not problems of management, but of design. We need a
system overhaul.

Green economics is not just
about the environment. Certainly we must move to harmonize with natural
systems, to make our economies flow benignly like sailboats in the wind of
ecosystem processes. But doing this requires great human creativity,
tremendous knowledge, and the widespread participation of everyone. Human
beings and human workers can no longer serve as cogs in the machine of
accumulation, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Ecological development
requires an unleashing of human development and an extension of democracy.
Social and ecological transformation go hand-in-hand.

Green economics and green politics both
emphasize the creation of positive alternatives in all areas of life and every
sector of the economy. Green economics does not prioritize support for either
the "public" or the "private" sector. It argues that BOTH
sectors must be transformed so that markets express social and ecological
values, and the state becomes merged with grassroots networks of community
innovation. For this to happen, new economic processes must be designed, and
new rules of the game written, so that incentives for ecological conduct are
built into everyday economic life. The state can then function less as a
policeman, and more as a coordinator. This is a very different kind of
"self-regulation" than current profit- and power- driven market
forces. The basis for self-regulation in a green economy would be community,
and intelligent design which provides incentives for the right things.

Here are ten
interrelated principles that cover key dimensions of a green economy:

1. The Primacy of Use-value,
Intrinsic Value & Quality: This is the fundamental principle of the green
economy as a service economy, focused on end-use, or human and environment
needs. Matter is a means to the end of satisfying real need, and can be
radically conserved. Money similarly must be returned to a status as a means to
facilitate regenerative exchanges, rather than an end in itself. When this is
done in even a significant portion of the economy, it can undercut the
totalitarian power of money in the entire economy.

2. Following Natural Flows: The economy moves
like a proverbial sailboat in the wind of natural processes by flowing not only
with solar, renewable and "negawatt" energy, but also with natural
hydrological cycles, with regional vegetation and food webs, and with local
materials. As society becomes more ecological, political and economic
boundaries tend to coincide with ecosystem boundaries. That is, it becomes
bioregional.

3. Waste Equals Food: In nature there is no
waste, as every process output is an input for some other process. This
principle implies not only a high degree of organizational complementarity, but
also that outputs and by-products are nutritious and non-toxic enough to be
food for something.

4. Elegance and Multifunctionality: Complex food
webs are implied by the previous principle--integrated relationships which are
antithetical to industrial society's segmentation and fragmentation. What
Roberts & Brandum (1995) call "economics with peripheral vision",
this elegance features "problem-solving strategies that develop multiple
wins and positive side-effects from any one set of actions".

5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale: This does
not simply mean "small is beautiful", but that every regenerative
activity has its most appropriate scale of operation. Even the smallest
activities have larger impacts, however, and truly ecological activity
"integrates design across multiple scales", reflecting influence of
larger on smaller and smaller on larger (Van der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).

6. Diversity: In a world of constant flux,
health and stability seem to depend on diversity. This applies to all levels
(diversity of species, of ecosystems, of regions), and to social as well as
ecological organization.

7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization,
Self-Design: Complex systems necessarily rely on "nested hierarchies"
of intelligence which coordinate among themselves in a kind of resonant dance.
These hierarchies are built from the bottom up, and--in contrast to
civilization's social hierarchies--the base levels are the most important. In
an economy which moves with ecosystem processes, tremendous scope for local
response, design and adaptation must be provided--although these local and
regional domains must be attuned to larger processes. Self-reliance is not
self-sufficiency, but facilitates a more flexible and holistic interdependence.

8. Participation & Direct Democracy: To enable
flexibility and resilience, ecological economic design features a high
"eyes to acres" ratio (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1996)--that is, lots
of local observation and participation. Conversely, ecological organization and
new information/communications technologies can provide the means for deeper
levels of participation in the decisions that count in society.

9. Human Creativity and Development: Displacing
resources from production and tuning into the spontaneous productivity of
nature requires tremendous creativity. It requires all-round human development
that entails great qualities of nurture. These are qualities of giving and real service that have been
suppressed (especially in men) by the social and psychological conditioning of
the industrial order. In green change, the personal and political, the social
and ecological, go hand-in-hand. Social, aesthetic and spiritual capacities
become central to attaining economic efficiency, and become important goals in
themselves.

10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment,
the Landscape & Spatial Design: As Permaculturalist Bill Mollison has
emphasized, the greatest efficiency gains can often be achieved by a simple
spatial rearrangement of system components. Elegant, mixed-use integrated
design which moves with nature is place-based. In addition, our buildings, in
one way or another, absorb around 40 per cent of materials and energy
throughput in North America. Thus, conservation and efficiency
improvements in this sector impact tremendously on the entire economy.

Green economic conversion must be radical, but it must
also be incremental and organic. How is this possible? Rodale cites the need
for a kind of economic succession which mimics ecological landscape change. We
need "pioneer enterprises" which can thrive in today's hostile
economic landscape, but also prepare the ground for more ecological and
egalitarian enterprises to come. A vision of what each sector of the economy
would look like in an ecological economy--based on the specifics of each
place--is a starting point. This vision must be coupled with practical action
in each of these sectors, gradually moving toward this vision. Enough practical
activity can eventually generate the impetus for state action to level the
playing field for ecological alternatives.